Random musings on history, politics, and more

Archive for August 24th, 2009

Last week, Wikileaks posted several hundred emails sent to and from the Hotmail account of the (defunct?) Fargo, North Dakota chapter of the National Socialist Movement. It’s not the most interesting leak, unless you’re really big on the personal squabbles of domestic extremists, but if you read through it, you can’t help but get the impression that Jeff Schoep, erstwhile “Commander” of the NSM, is a monster raving looney.

Where it gets interesting, though, is that others in the National Socialist movement seem to be under the impression that the “North Dakota Unit” leaked the emails themselves. (Or more properly “himself”, since I don’t think the “Unit” was ever more than one guy. But I digress.) Why? The money, for whatever reason, seems to be on this having been an intentional leak by “William Herring”, the highly apologetic homeless (!) guy behind the “North Dakota Unit”, out of some sort of spite at Commandant Schoep.

I strongly suspect this is just spin-doctoring, as I really don’t see what Herring would gain by basically exposing himself to the world. I’m assuming Herring’s Hotmail account was h4x0r3d by some antifascist activist, unless some sort of proof otherwise comes to light. It is funny – to me, anyway – to see just how desperate extremists of whatever stripe are to spin things to their own personal advantage.

Ideological matters aside, I really love to see internal politics tear domestic extremist groups apart, and it’s been a great year so far for that. I mean, I thought last year was good, what with a couple high-profile left-wing groups dissolving, and Hal Turner being outed – or maybe not, who can keep up with all the allegations – as a government stooge, but then this year… The North American anarchist community imploded; the White Nationalists are busy getting bogged down in dead-end political issues, infighting, and generally falling apart; the Hells Angels can’t figure out where to buy a clue; the Teabaggers spent so much time in a la-la land of their own making that their heads collectively exploded… it’s a never-ending “conflict of personalities”.